Lloyds Banking Group now offer gambling-blocking software Gamban

Lloyds Banking Group has announced they are now providing customers of Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax access to gambling-blocking software, Gamban, adding an extra layer of protection for vulnerable customers of high street banks.

Lloyds Banking Group has announced they are now providing customers of Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax access to gambling-blocking software, Gamban, as an additional layer of protection to their gambling transaction freeze, available through mobile banking applications.

Elyn Corfield, Managing Director of Consumer Finance at Lloyds Banking Group, said: “We know that gambling related harm can have serious and long term impacts on our customers and we are committed to making sure they can easily access a wide range of support. In addition to our card controls that allow the freezing of gambling transactions we are delighted to have developed a pilot with Gamban offering our customers three months free access to their software, providing another level of protection.”

The role banks have taken in preventing gambling-related harm is critical as addiction tends to manifest initially as a financial problem.

It’s very positive to see forward-thinking banking institutions such as Lloyds Banking Group rise to the challenge of protecting vulnerable customers from gambling addiction through barriers such as spend control and gambling-blocking technology. Layers of protection inevitably amount to better friction.

Solutions to gambling harm prevention will rely on collaboration across sectors, as it is likely to include restrictions on access, money and time spent. Now that banks have started to tackle the ‘money’ component, it seems logical that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mobile networks could also have a role to play alongside Gamban in restricting ‘access’.

The by-product of Gamban is a global and constantly-expanding curated list of unregulated, illegal and offshore domains that are added in real-time to a growing block-list — something the ISP and telecom sector is likely to benefit from in partnering with Gamban.

But the layered approach to harm prevention is crucial. Unless multiple barriers are in place, a single barrier is almost always easy enough to bypass.

Consider the person who discovers they can send their funds from their bank account to a third-party payment wallet and continue gambling. Or the person who registered for the National Online Self-Exclusion Scheme (Gamstop), but found they could access unregulated sites outside its scope. Or indeed, the person who decided that they would buy a new device, unprotected and without gambling-blocking software. Yet you put all of these barriers together and circumvention requires substantial effort, making self-exclusion far more robust.

The ongoing challenge will be how this is all brought together concisely and consistently, but Gamban stands prepared to collaborate with any sector or organisation that shares our objective to reduce gambling harm.